Tag Archives: Captain Kirk

It was the 51st anniversary of Star Trek a couple of days ago. Keep that in mind as you read on…

Since last time I Bun Tooned, this humble little bunny won a Joe Shuster Award for Best Webcomic.

Thanks for any and all who nominated or voted for the rabbit. He’d blush if he wasn’t covered in white hair.

Speaking of which….

My wife is convinced there is a context for which this woman’s comment wasn’t horrible. She thinks the cashier thought that two hundred books is too big a collection for one person and that it’s an achievement worth passing along.

I think she believed I wasn’t capable of reading that many books in the limited time on Earth I have left.

I read at least one of these per week when I have the spare time, sometimes two a week.

I’m fairly sure I have more than four or five years left breathing.

Ty the Guy, not yet OUT!

I’ve only gotten through about forty of them since I started buying them at the Value Village, but quite a number of them have been rip-snortin’ fun little yarns.

My favourites so far:

David Gerrold, creator of Tribbles did this one!

Spock’s son takes the stage. Pretty good story, actually.

First contact between Vulcans and Humans, NOT the story told in First Contact, and I’d argue it’s better.

Adventures of Captain Pike and Lt. Spock. Much good.

Fun little thriller with a great set-up…Kirk gets a court martial for breaking the Prime Directive!

I’m dropping in for a moment to share a couple more fun moments of Trekkieness here at the Bunny Factory.

First up, a sketch cover I did at the convention this weekend. A fan got a Shatner signature on a blank Star Trek cover, and asked me to fill in the space above it with a portrait of Kirk and his ship above. I get asked to do likenesses a lot in my work a lot (Mad Magazine, Batman 66, Dexter, Star Trek) but it’s never as easy to a good likeness sitting at a convention floor working from a little phone-google image of the celeb. Fortunately, the fan brought with him a nice big shot of Shatner’s handsome mug, and it turned out okay.

Second: We sold a few copies of David Gerrold’s TROUBLE WITH TRIBBLES book, (the one with the all-new Tybunny cover art) at the convention….but we only had the softcover version at our table, and no one got to see the FULL wraparound cover that included Koloth bathing in the vile, barking, headless rats (his words, not mine). Well, since I drew six zillion tribbles, and my devoted wife coloured six zillion tribbles, you have to see them all six zillion tribbles.

so there.

And it’s nice to announce that my latest Star Trek-adjacent project (with oft mentioned Trek Legend David Gerrold), “OH THE PLACES YOU’LL BOLDLY GO” is gangbustering its way around Kickstarter.

But like all things Kickstarter-y, we need your help to feed the beast (and yes, I’m referring to my teenage children). If you’re hoping to see the love child of a Grinch and a Horta, or ever wondered how Thing One and Thing Two would deal with the Prime Directive, this is the book for you.

And so begins the end… Last Day! Today will run 10am to 5pm and it will be BUSY! I’ve got a few things scheduled and it’s my last chance to scour all the dollar bins and make sure I haven’t missed anything magical.

At 1:00pm, I will be part of GrokSpock, a live reading of Star Trek: Wrath of Khan. We have our usual GrokSpock crew with a surprise guest: actor/screenwriter/voice actor David Hayter (my kid who goes by the nickname “Snake” for his standup gigs, is very excited about this!). Will post the room number as soon as I find it…

At 2:15, I will run to Room 715 for COMIC BOOK BOOTCAMP: How to write a story someone will want to read. (If you can’t make the workshop or would like to take my entire course called HOW TO WRITE COMICS, there are still a few spaces open. Info is HERE.)

Then, I’m back to P57. Come find me there… Keiren will be keeping my sketch list, and selling my sketchcovers and copies of The World of Star Trek and The Trouble with Tribbles, both by David Gerrold with covers by me.

In honour of today’s GrokSpock reading, a memory of the very first one we did:

And, of course…don’t forget the Kickstarter for Oh, The Places You’ll Boldy Go! Click on the Enterprise-like ship to go to the link:

Day Three! We can do this! 10am – 7pm, I’ll be back at P57. Won’t be there the whole time as I’ll leave to do a panel on

From the Screen to the Page: Comic Book Adaptations, Room 714 at 11:30.

I’ll be speaking from my experience writing a Star Trek mini (Missions End), drawing and writing Batman Adventures and now…drawing a parody of Star Trek meets Dr Seuss for the Kickstarter project, Oh, the Places You’ll Boldly Go! (see what I did there?). For info on the Kicktarter, click on a tribble:

I’m not doing a new Bun Toon today as I’m busy with the convention but luckily, I have Bun Toon’d about Trek before:

Once again, I’ll be back sitting at P57 (changed from what’s in the program) today, 10am – 7pm! Doesn’t look like I have any panels or workshops scheduled today, so I’ll be at my table (unless I can sneak away and find some dollar bins! I’ve got a long list of comics I need to find to finish off some mini-series so I can finally read ’em!).

Last week, mere moments after I posted the Bun Toon, I headed out to my local theatre and took in the latest Trek Movie. This week (with very very slight spoilers), I report back with…

Beyond turns out to be my favourite of the last three NuTrek movies. Maybe because it wasn’t so ambitious, and maybe because they got Spock and McCoy bang-on-bullseye for all their scenes, but it “felt” right, and I was grinning the whole time. I’ve warmed to the Earth-2 crew, even the new Kirk, though he’s the only one that still doesn’t “feel right” to me. The rest of it was delightful.

It’s nice to see Trek back on track for the Fiftieth Anniversary coming up in less than a month. With a new TV series, and other little things here and there, there’s much to celebrate for this old Trekkie, including a return to doing NEW Trek related projects that I can’t talk about in public quite yet…but I promise, I shall shout and howl and promote like crazy when I’m allowed to. (I probably wasn’t even allowed to say as much as I just did.)

So forget I said anything.

I can’t wait for the next Trek Movie, already announced…with the GHOST OF KIRK’S FATHER! BOO!

Ty the Guy OUT!

A few days ago, another one of my heroes passed away at the age of 91: Long time Mad Magazine legend, Jack Davis.

I first encountered Jack, like most of us did, in a Mad Magazine when I was about nine or ten. He was one of the “gang of idiots”, the cartoonists’ cartoonist, whose casual excellence, and confident line work has been a primary inspiration in my career.

In my twenties, I consciously tried to draw like Wally Wood, Neal Adams and Jack Kirby, but some years ago, I realised that SUB-consciously, I always draw like Jack Davis.

At least I do when I’m at my best.

His aesthetic, his line, his easy precision, and his lack of pretension, worked together to create what I consider the perfect “cartoon” style of the 20th Century. It was accessible, and impossibly skilled at the same time. There was something about the way he seemed to splash colours or tone on his drawings as though he had only minutes until a deadline, and yet EVERYTHING looked like it was in the right place. The effect was magnificent, and obviously in high demand as Jack did a heck of a lot more than Mad Magazine.

When I finally got good with a crow-quill, I went to Jack Davis art for instruction on how to create all those fabulous textures and tones. It’s a master class on how to make crosshatching and greys work in illustration.

Around the age of nine or ten, I noticed the same guy who was killing it in Mad Magazine, was the guy that did those fantastic TV Guide covers, and those wonderful movie posters, and those album jackets and those back cover adverts. Jack Davis was everywhere a cartoonist was called for, and no one ever did it better.

Here’s a gallery of some of those MANY TV Guide covers, not as often seen as his Mad Magazine or Time Magazine covers.